


Deft

by orphan_account



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 7x16, Carl dies, M/M, Rick's hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 05:40:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10564758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Negan makes good on his threats.AN: This is the darkest I've ever written Negan. But there is light at the end of the tunnel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was literally crying as I wrote this. 7x16 knocked me sideways :( Comic Negan was never so cruel! I can nae promise that it'll be alright in the end, but I'll try.

It's a fucking tragedy. Is the first thought. And even in his mind, there's that morbid twist of dark humor. Like if he smiles wide enough everything will turn to daisies.

And everything _will_ turn to daisies is the thing.

It figures Little Serial Killer is dangerous. He'd known that. In time he'd be a bigger threat than his father. Because he knows what Negan knows. That they're all just useless bags of flesh, and living is a game. One that only has the briefest moments of euphoria interspersed. It isn't really a reason to keep living, but Negan's always been hardwired for survival. There isn't really a reason to keep anyone else alive either, except to satisfy his own needs.

He isn't heartless. He does need. Children give him a strange impulse to protect. He needs to feel the touch of someone, his wives, because sometimes when it's been too long without any sort of human contact his skin itches and aches. He knows that from the year or two spent alone, rotating partners that fall into death as easily as playing pattycake. He needs the distraction of other people.

But that's all they really are - distractions. 

He feels proud of Carl, a little. It's not paternal, not really, despite what he says. It's more like the coach in him has brought an underdog to the championships. He let the boy get away with too much already. He tells Rick as much.

Rick, who is _not.broken.anymore_.

If he ever was. But no - Negan knows better. He was broken. He _is_ broken. Only now it's in a way that is steady and apathetic. He's running on elastic bands and panic and thinks that he's not. But he is.

Rick's gaze is steely, defiant.

It's a shame about Rick's pretty hands. 

It's fucked up he's already regretting them even before he kills Carl. He can recognize that, at the very least. When they hear Michonne's scream Negan can only feel a vague sort of thankfulness. It'll be different, with Rick's lover out of the way. With his boy out of the way. Nothing left between them then. Just raw flesh against burning alcohol.

He likes the kid. Doesn't really want his blood out, not on him either. And he's had fantasies where he's covered in Rick's blood, doesn't even really care when it's others, but something about taking joy in Carl's blood splattering over him seems sacrilegious.

Rick will hate himself when he's in his right mind. Negan capitalizes on it in advance. Gets right in Rick's space.

"Well Rick, you chose this. I truly don't know what more I could have done to warn you. This isn't a warning, this is a punishment. I'm gonna kill Carl now. I'm gonna make it one nice, hard swing. Try to do it in one. Because I like him. I just want you to put that in your brain and roll it around for a minute. I'm gonna kill Carl and then Lucille here, she's going to take your hands."

Rick's response is a rehash of their first night. He doesn't address the threat against Carl. Negan gets it, he can't. Because there is no hope. They both know he's going to do it. A tear slides down Rick's face. He can't cry as much, Negan notes - the well has runneth dry. It's possibly the last tear Negan will ever see out of him. He has the strangest urge to lick it from his face.

Negan's never been a slave to his urges. Not after Lucille. It's why, even though he doesn't really want to, he can bring the bat down.

"He said I could do it." He says in the moment before Carl dies. Because Rick's given him nothing to work with. He knows, later, Rick will recall those exact words. Will wonder if they're true.

He doesn't lie, he makes it in one go.

The kid crumples. Rick doesn't scream. He's still. 

"I love you." he says, softly, to the blood splattered kid on the ground. It's a private, intimate moment. 

Then it's over and Rick is steadying his hands out in front of him. Negan is almost tempted not to do it. But it's a mercy, and he knows this - knows no one but him and Rick will see it that way - and it's the only bit of mercy he can afford to give.

 Negan's affording him a distraction from his dead child, a way to focus his self loathing and grief. A way for him to survive under Negan.

The first wet smack - and Lucille is still bloody with Carl - doesn't get a reaction. It's shock, pure and simple. Negan bludgeons until the mass of ruined flesh is unrecognizable. Rick faints, pitches over, before the second one is done.

Alexandria belongs to the Saviors now. There's no reason to leave.

Negan claims a house as far from Rick's formerly happy home as possible. He has them bring Rick in, elevate his legs until the Doctor gets there.

The Doctor takes the messy flesh and snips until everything is nice and neat.

It takes until nightfall to get all the bodies off the streets.

Takes longer than that for Rick to wake up.

 

The man's barely human. Sounds more like an animal, wounded or dying. Rick is screaming and it's only when Negan comes over, fits a hand bruisingly over his mouth and whispers lowly in his ear that he stops.

The Saviors, idiots that they are, think it's because Rick's hands are gone.

Carl wouldn't have wanted Rick to be weak, and Negan had only relayed the message.

Rick lunges at him. Stumps going bloody at the pressure of his hits. Negan laughs like it's him who has gone mad. He lets Rick kick, and spit and stump him for a minute and then he puts Rick's back on the floor. Knocks the wind out of him.

He holds him tightly, bruising. It's not his imagination when Rick leans into it. Rick's trying to hurt himself. Negan obliges. He smacks a stump on the raw end, puts a collar of bruises around Rick's throat after that.

Rick uses his teeth and Negan smacks a few of them on the left side out. Rick's choking on them. Negan turns him over and five stars him so hard on the back it's sure to leave more than just a handprint. Rick spits them up.

Negan doesn't let Rick fade. Turns him over again and lightly smacks his face so he doesn't pass out. He holds him as they lay on the floor, faces inches apart. Rick's still fighting. The little tugs and pushes along Negan's body are intermittent though, at their best. Blood is leaking from his stumps.

Negan's unbelievably cruel with his words, whispered against Rick. He needs to be. Rick needs him to be.

"Sacrificed your one and only son to me Rick. Couldn't even hide him to keep him safe, could you? May as well have been holding the bat yourself for all you seemed to care."

Their breath is mingling and Rick is trying not to look in his eyes but his gaze keeps getting drawn back. Like Rick just can't help himself.

"You're gonna kill me huh?"

Rick nods, hate in his eyes, spits in Negan's face.

Negan just laughs, licks the spit from his lips.

It's an ugly scene.

 

The Saviors are all in by the end of the week. The few remaining Alexandrians are in order. Have been briefed on the points system, put in their place. The Hilltop, The Kingdom - all too late and over before they properly began. Negan cuts them some slack, doesn't kill the King or the Widow. Negan's wives have their own house, and it isn't with Negan. He needs his space, impossibly - as if he hadn't been so greedy for human contact weeks before.

Rick remains in his care. 

The man doesn't speak to him. Every waking moment is spent fighting, Negan holding Rick down to the floor as Rick shudders and hisses, angrily spitting beneath him. Negan waterboards him almost, forcing water down his throat. Rick coughs and sputters and tries to get it out. Negan sits carefully atop him, pries his mouth open, fingers sticking deliberately into jagged sockets, and pours. It's violent and Rick aspirating water into his lungs is a very real concern.

Negan does it at least once a day.

Rick soils himself when he's unconscious, and Negan cleans him up the first few times. He leaves it on the third day though, wants Rick to see the mess he's made afterwards. Rick doesn't even notice, in his madness. It makes Negan angry, hotly angry in a way he isn't even when he's killing people. He all but rips Rick's clothes off him. 

"Look how fucking dirty you are." He nearly shouts. Slams Rick's head against the floor. Rick seethes and squirms. Negan splashes a water bottle angrily across him. Takes Rick's shirt and scrubs the filth thoroughly away. Rick doesn't seem to care or notice that Negan's by his most sensitive parts. His sense of self preservation is completely gone.

"Stupid fuck." Negan says. Grabs Rick's cock and squeezes it painfully hard. There isn't much of a change. Rick is just one big ball of pain.

He force feeds Rick, later on, end of the week. It has to happen so he doesn't waste away. He goes with soft things, like applesauce, so Rick doesn't have to chew. Rick spits it up. Negan puts it back on the spoon, as if Rick were a baby. When Rick bites the spoon, cracks a tooth, is when Negan holds his head tight, pours it down his throat.

 

It's an eventuality that Negan's attention is needed elsewhere. They find a prison cell and the consideration Negan gives it is so brief it may as well have never crossed his mind in the first place. The bars cause a division. Rick will feel safe behind bars.

Rick is not safe.

Not at all.

Negan hauls Rick upstairs when he's unconscious and ties him to the bed with rope. He laughs on his way out, cool and unsteady. Surveying the scene reminds him of movies about inbreds, deformed and hungry for flesh. He knows Rick will look the part, without his hands, when he wakes and starts thrashing and hissing.

When he gets in that night Negan can't tell if Rick's been saving himself for Negan or not. It takes an hour and a half for Rick to exhaust. He's still pushing at Negan faintly, it feels faint but it's all the strength Rick can muster, when they're face to face Negan's breath filling Rick's lungs on the exhale. 

Rick's eyes are glinting in the dark. There's blood on the bed, Negan can smell it. He doesn't mind sleeping in it, so long as it's Ricks.

"Let me tell you the story of a boy," Negan says cruelly, "who's father _didn't_ love him. No, sir, not even when he said he did."

It's a long night.

 

"I hate you" are the first words out of Rick's mouth when he finally speaks. "I hate you I hate you I hate you IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou"

The litany is said with conviction, quietly it runs together. Their lips are bare inches from each other. Negan's looking at Rick's pretty pink mouth, the words forming there. 

"Good." He says. Rick should.

Rick's breathing breaks down. The hyperventilation sounds painful, wheezing.

"loved him. loved him so much. my baby. my baby." Negan holds Rick's gaze. His eyes are wild, haunted and wide. He sounds like he wants to die.

Negan lets him murmur as crazy as he likes. Holds his gaze for hours.

 

Rick stops fighting his every waking moment after that. The exhaustion rises off him like a heat wave in the desert. He doesn't talk again. Sometimes, when Negan thinks Rick has to use the washroom he'll even cooperate. Let Negan pull him to the toilet and sit him down. 

He doesn't fight him when Negan washes him either. Just sits quietly in the tub as soap is scrubbed across his skin.

He mumbles in his sleep.

'Why would you say that Carl?' and 'Honey, mom would be proud'

Sweet, sweet dreams.

He doesn't know he's doing it.

 

One day, as he's holding Rick down - who is violently sputtering and kicking beneath him, spitting - Negan begins to get hard. It's completely involuntary. Nothing about the situation is arousing. It's a combination of the intimacy, of the friction - if doesn't matter that Rick is pretty and flushed beneath him because he's also hurt - soul crushed, and that doesn't do much for Lucille 2.0.

Rick feels it, rocks into him.

"Hurt me." He says, " _hurtmehurtmehurtmehurtme_."

Negan backs off of him, very nearly runs out the door. But he controls his pace, is leisurely about it. 

Rick bursts into tears. It's very nearly shocking. It lures Negan back. He gets close, but doesn't touch Rick.

"Didn't I say it was going to make you sad?" 

 

Negan's getting tired of wiping the spit from his face every time.

"Rick," he says, hands coming up to frame Rick's face, "I don't like that and you're going to stop it."

Rick spits again and it lands thickly in Negan's stubble. Negan forces his fingers into the tender joints of Rick's jaw, works his mouth open.

"Let's see how you like it."

The spit gathers in his mouth, more accurately it waters. He lets the gob of spit slide slowly down into Rick's mouth. Licks his lips after. Rick tries to spit it up, doesn't manage. Negan turns his expression hard, threats aren't going to work - he already knows that.

"Think Carl would like to see you like this? Swallowing another man's spit?"

 It gets the job done for a while.

 

Rick sleeps beside Negan in his bed. Negan wakes to attacks more than a few times, but they're always so pitiful and uncoordinated the most they do is get Negan full of Rick's blood, his spit. Those nights Negan always tiredly turns them over, yanks Rick's mouth open with his fingers and spits. They are always close, Negan is always in his space.

He blames his own tiredness, his own clumsiness, for how his lips end up on Rick's one night. Spit dribbles down, from Negan to Rick. It's a wet, messy kiss. He's about to apologize, but he stops himself because an apology is not something he can give Rick. 

Rick is tired, hardly notices the crossed boundary. He's pushing weakly at Negan, still fighting. 

Negan makes sure there isn't anything sharp in the bedroom that Rick can put in his mouth.

 

Rick's healing very slowly. The Doctor is concerned. Negan isn't. If Rick could die, if Rick's body would let him, he would be dead already. The Doctor and Negan are the only people Rick sees for months. Negan's flippant with the Doctor, like he doesn't care. It doesn't really matter how he acts, the Doctor is tight lipped, always, because he knows how to survive.

There's a rumor going around Alexandria that Negan's killed Rick, used his body and his insides to decorate his home.

Fuck if it's not true.

 

There is a game plan, even if it's a poor one. Negan doesn't really think Rick will ever be a contributing member of society. Prosthesis aren't even the problem. He'd be useful as an example - as a _pet,_ forever trailing behind him - eventually. But Negan doesn't want that for him. Doesn't want Rick to stop fighting.

He should want that and he knows it. It's all he wanted before, but it's moot because there is nothing left that can be preserved from Rick's obedience now. It's all Rick has left, is the thing. 

He doesn't want anyone to see Rick. Doesn't want to be forced into a situation where he'll have to punish him publicly. Worse, doesn't want people laughing at Rick's struggles, Rick's weak fight. They don't know half of what it takes.

He can't send Rick to another community, because there's a high chance of him turning them. Can't put him out on the edges because it's dangerous for a man with no hands. It's a no-win situation.

Negan feels like he should have known even before he killed Carl, Rick will never leave his side. Like a figurative and scantly literal ball and chain. It'll continue like it does, because all the other options are worse.

He knows Judith is in Hilltop. With The Widow Who Is Behaving Herself For Now. Rick doesn't ask about Judith, probably doesn't want to draw his attention, so Negan doesn't say.

The little girl's adjusting well. 

She'd giggled when she recognized him. Negan wants it to be the last time she sees him, but it probably won't happen like that.

 

It feels like a landmark when Rick's healed enough that the bandages can come off. The skin there is puckered and scarred, pink and fresh. Rick is still fighting, still spitting. It's almost routine now, the way Negan leans over, pries and makes the man swallow his spit. He's careful that their lips don't touch.

He won't deny some days he gets as close as he can. Lips scant millimeters apart. Eyes on Rick's. It's intimate, erotic almost. But their lips don't touch again, he makes sure of it. 

 

It takes so long to happen Negan almost can't believe it when it does. Rick finally takes to drinking water of his own volition, taking food. He'll even pause in his fighting and look away when he needs to go to the bathroom. It's good.

It'll be easier with cooperation, now that Negan doesn't need to be worrying about Rick's needs every moment of the day.

It is easier. 

They fall into a pattern of sorts. Negan isn't always there and sometimes he comes home to a mess. Sometimes Rick's soiled himself, in full or part, and other times he's thrashed against glass or other sharp things.

Despite what Rick thinks, Negan is actually trying to improve the lives of his people. Which is more than should reasonably be expected from him, given they are no longer the distraction they once were. Very nearly hardly necessary.

The distraction - the heart of his human need - that's all Rick.

It's almost a shock when he comes across his wives. As if he's forgotten of their existence. Sherry is smiling widely on the porch, Amber is laughing. The other women are crowded in the kitchen, he can see them through the window. They don't need him, it's always been the other way around and he's known that. 

He knows what it says about him when he doesn't feel loss, or rejection, or anything at all. 

 

The Widow makes a move but it's not one Negan's expecting. He'd been expecting bloodshed, a strike. Instead she sits calmly across the table from him and negotiates. His food and supplies - the whole of the Hilltop's tributes - are going to be destroyed. Her proposals are reasonable. There isn't even the suggestion of the Hilltop being free, instead it's a set portion of open trade, community projects, and Hilltop Saviors of their own.

Of course she's one of Rick's people. Clever, brave and no regard for her own life. He tells her as much.

Her eyes go hard at the mention of Rick. Negan can only imagine if he'd brought her husband up.

He acquiesces. He tells her they will need twice the tribute, and he's surprised when she doesn't argue. As a leader, it's clear she knows the value of not looking weak. 

He tells her she can't see Rick though and she goes pale.

"Like you've given us a body to bury." she says.

"What? You want a fucking grave for his hands?" he scoffs. It's misleading though, because Rick's hands do have a grave, they're with his son.

Her hand flies to her mouth in shock.

"He's alive." she says weakly, something like horror dawning.

"It's not forever." Negan says, because he doesn't fucking need her going rogue over this, "You can see him when he's better."

He knows she won't be seeing Rick for a very long time.

  

Rick's dexterity isn't getting better. It's because he doesn't try. 

"How are you gonna kill me," Negan asks cruelly to incite him, "when you can't even properly wipe your own ass?"

He doesn't use Carl this time. Doesn't torture Rick with the mention of him anymore. He's realized some time ago that he _forgives_ Rick for making him do it. He's not stupid, he realizes it's all kinds of fucked up. Which is why Rick will never catch wind of it.

Rick gets a little better at using his stumps more after that. He still doesn't put as much effort into it as Negan wishes he would. Rick, Negan notices, does a swell job of pretending the rest of his arms don't exist, as if they've been severed from their sockets.

 

"I couldn't do it." Negan says one night, Rick intermittently struggling beside him - it's one of Rick's better nights where he still can. Negan can tell it's getting increasingly harder. "I should have killed you."

Though still, it's not as if Carl's death wouldn't have been inevitable, after that. Rick doesn't seem to have heard.

"Couldn't do it that first night. Your fucking eyes. So broken afterwards. Hard like mine. I recognized you, you know."

There were societal rules that had to be followed, or everything breaks down. 

"They were pretty though," he continues, "pretty eyes."

 

Rick starts and stops in pulls. It's inevitable. The survival instinct wins every time. Rick's sheer exhaustion had to dampen his fighting spirit eventually. 

Still, it's about nine months in before Negan can just lie down beside him and have Rick more or less snuggle in. It's in the context of a fight. But those days, Negan notices, Rick doesn't fight very hard. 

It's another month and Rick's pretty mouth is open and waiting, before Negan even gets his fingers in the crook of his jaw. Negan knows better, but it's almost like Rick spits at him just to get closer.

 

He attributes it to the fact that Rick is so silent, so stone like, that more often than not Negan finds himself babbling into the negative space between them at night, words hidden in the dark.

He lays down the five year plan. The ten. It's a little more generous than previously. It weighs on him that Carl died for fucking absolutely nothing. In a way, he doesn't want Rick to feel it. Wants him to stubbornly hold onto his ideology. Freedom or Death, the American way.

Security over Liberty, Negan's way. 

It's shocking when one night Rick speaks back.

Negan is laying down a strategy for obedience for packs like the Wolves. People gone to seed, violent and ruined. 

"You won't tame them. They'd rather die than live under you." Rick spits out, the spittle is completely intentional. Negan softly tugs him over and pries his mouth open, spits mechanically - absentmindedly. Negan thinks Rick's projecting. Still, he pretends to roll the words around in his mind.

Rick has nothing in common with the monsters, no matter what he's implying. It's a- _fucking_ -mazing Negan is even putting a plan for rehabilitation in place. Magnanimously Negan doesn't bring it up. Rick's pretending he isn't waiting for a response.

"Freedom comes from sacrifice and bloodshed, you know that Rick. Maybe they can help you fill the quota." 

 

Rick is catching on to his little game. It's obvious in the way a wave of fresh pain breaks in his eyes.

It's not that Negan's setting up Carl as a martyr. The name doesn't cross his lips, even if it's the name they both think about every day. The bottom line, Negan supposes, is that he'd always cared more about Rick's well being then even a fifteen year old child's. Thinking of the boy, so like his Dad and so young - messy hair and Sheriff's hat, makes his chest hurt.

Negan isn't sure at which point it becomes obvious that he is using everything, however counter intuitive, to absolve Rick of his guilt. Pain and humiliation to distract him, blunt and cruel words to push back against, make him focus on how cruel Negan is, how much he must be lying.

Rick _hates_ it. The knowledge burns him up. 

In the end, though, Rick must know that Negan's the one who swung the bat.

 

I killed him, because I couldn't bring myself to kill you - those are the words behind Negan's teeth.

 

It takes a year before Rick is finally able to make good on his promise, in part. The knife isn't in very far. Not deadly far, still Rick has paled, is shaking. Negan pulls it out. Rick's stump brushes against the wound, then more firmly.

It takes Negan a minute to realize he's trying to put pressure on it. He laughs shortly at that. He draws Rick close, puts his arms around him. It alarms Rick, because Negan's never done it before and he makes a worried little noise at the back of his throat. Negan breathes deeply into Rick's hair. 

"It's alright Darlin, it's good." 

Tears are springing to Rick's eyes, unshed.

"You'll get me next time." Negan placates. Rick shudders against him. Negan lets his blood get all over them both.

 

It gets downright damn domestic after that. Negan does everything - the cooking, the cleaning and the laundry. Rick's taken to showering himself. Doesn't usually need help with much anymore. When food is simple Rick can even eat it himself.

Negan watches him eat an apple. How his head dips low to the counter to bring it to his mouth, how he bites gingerly. Rick's missing teeth on the left create a cute little gap, and Negan's glad he didn't knock out the front ones. Rick works the apple with his mouth, juice running down his chin.

It's sick that Negan gains any pleasure from watching Rick at all.

Clearly remembers Carl warning him off his Dad.

He wants to say he doesn't know what he's doing, claim ignorance, but he can't. He knows exactly what he's doing when he walks over to Rick, gets close. Rick's mouth falls open like clockwork. Pink inside, shiny, and smelling of apples. Negan watches as it takes him a moment to realize he didn't spit, that Negan isn't going to. His mouth shuts slowly.

Negan swipes a hand across Rick's sticky chin.

 

"I'll never forgive you for Carl." Rick says.

When he speaks, so rarely, Negan listens.

"Good." Negan says. Rick turns away from him, like something has been settled.

 

The next time Rick spits at him, when Negan goes to spit back Rick nudges forward, slots their lips together. Negan's spit drips wetly between them. He knows he should pull back. He doesn't.

He deepens it, angles Rick's head back to get deeper inside. His tongue touches the roof of Rick's mouth, prods at the empty tooth sockets. Their faces are messy with spit when Negan pulls away for a breath.

He doesn't quit kissing Rick until they both fall asleep the following morning. His lips are sore, so it's no surprise Rick's are puffy, red and bruised.

 

 He touches Rick, and lo and behold, Rick lets him.

 

 


End file.
